Saturday, January 16, 2016

Favorite Music of 2015

Music is my third passion, after my marriage and
movies. It was cultivated through the years by many, but mostly by a few. For
some years after college I abandoned it, but eventually it came back to me. It
combined with my passion for movies to a degree that recently I’ve found myself
including motion picture scores in with my favorite albums of each year. This
year there were so many favorites of each, traditional albums and original
motion picture soundtracks, that I decided to compile two favorite ten lists.

Even more so with music than with movies, it is
impossible to hear everything that is released within a year’s time. This is
why I avoid calling this a “top ten” list or a “best of” list. I could hardly
claim these are the best of the lot. Not only is there too much material out
there to make such a claim, but also each album and soundtrack score needs time
to breathe. You need to spend time with them before you can claim to truly know
them. I guess they’re like people that way. I think in the past that need to
spend time with them has favored albums that were released earlier in the year.
Those are the ones I got to spend the most time with. However, it seems this
year I’ve bucked that trend and find more late-year albums on each list than I
have in the past. This makes me feel I’ve done a better and fairer job of
judging these albums than ever before.

I usually don’t write anything about the individual albums
I pick each year. I like to let the music speak for itself. Plus, I reviewed a
few albums in college; and despite my ability to analyze film; I’ve never felt
I had the knowledge of music to write good album reviews. I don’t pay much
attention to the details so much as the feeling they give me. Sometimes I don’t
even hear the lyrics of a song until years after my first listen. This is
probably why I’m drawn to soundtrack scores as much as I am.

There are a few things I’d like to say about a couple
of the albums this year though.

First, in regard to Ryan Adams’ “1989”—I was
surprised not to see this album on more “Best of” lists at the end of the year.
I get the feeling people thought an entire cover album of another artist’s
songs was a lame idea, or maybe it’s more because it was an incredibly popular
artist’s album. I don’t know, but this is my favorite album from Ryan Adams in
a long time. This is a guy who is a perennial favorite of mine, so that’s
saying something. What Adams does here is not only make each and every one of
Taylor Swift’s songs his own, but he highlights the incredible musical ability
that went into composing each song. His arrangements are for the most part
vastly different from Swift’s, but by removing her particular pop music
sensibilities, it’s easier to see just what a rare talent she is.

I think it should also be noted that Adams didn’t
spend the entire year copying someone else’s catalogue. For the past year and a
half, before the release of his self-titled album in the fall of 2014, Adams
has been releasing three track EPs every two or three months that have
exemplified a remarkable range of original material, even for Adams. These eight
EPs each take a different tone and have further impressed me about the musical
abilities of this artist who has been making fine music for over a quarter of a
century at this point.

Second, in regard to the Blackhat Original Motion
Picture Soundtrack—For some reason this soundtrack has yet to be released in
any album format. The tracks are out there, and it might be possible to piece
together a playlist of this soundtrack album. There may be legal reasons behind
the lack of a release for this remarkable soundtrack, however. Harry
Gregson-Williams is credited as the film’s score composer. When he saw the final
cut of the film, he was shocked to find almost none of his music was used. He
set to twitter to complain about Michael Mann, who has a reputation for slicing
and dicing his composers’ scores with electronic music. Rumor is that Mann
brought Atticus Ross in to edit the music together and compose some replacement
music for Gregson-Williams’ more traditional score, but it appears most of the score
music was composed by electronic artist Ryan Amon, whose previous credits
include the score to the film “Elysium” and to the video games “Assassin’s
Creed: Unity” and “Bloodborn”. I hope any legal wrangling doesn’t keep this
soundtrack from surfacing in an album format eventually. Until it does, you’ll
just have to watch the movie to hear it.

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About Me

Andrew D. WellsAndrew is a professionally trained actor and stage director. He was a reporter for the daily newspaper The Marshall Democrat-News. He has been critiquing film since Mr. Lucas released the first of his "Star Wars" prequels in 1999. His reviews can also be seen atMarshall Democrat-News